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At the Dallas Museum of Art

I spent the afternoon at the Dallas Museum of Art with my hosts, Ava and Robert Everett, Carter Scaggs (printmaking professor at Collin County Community College where I am doing the workshops), and the lovely Karen and Amy (printmaking students). Funny thing, something I didn't expect, is that people were trying to play down my expectations for the museum -- funny, because the cliche of the Texan is that they boast about how everything is bigger and better. It turns out that in this case, the museum may not be a mega church for art like MOMA in New York or the Art Institute, but it is a very good museum indeed. On four floors, it houses collections of ancient Mexican art, Greek and Roman art, polynesian art, American and European art, with fantastic examples of each kind. As I wandered around from gallery to gallery, I decided to take pictures not just of complete paintings, but of sections of paintings that caught my attention.

For example, the DMA had a few really early paintings by Piet Mondrian (from 1916 or so) near one of his classic geometric paintings from 1938. I saw marks in the early paintings that were pretty similar to the classic abstract style:



I loved this loose section of a picture by Manet:



The contrast between the abstract solidity of the apple and the loose impressionism of the tablecloth in this 1924 painting by Matisse:


The unexpected red in the bottom left of a seascape by John Marin:


The complexity of the intersecting shapes in a great south-sea painting by Gauguin:


Well done, Dallas!
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